


Where You End and I Begin

by wishtheworst



Category: Haven - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-26
Updated: 2011-03-26
Packaged: 2017-10-17 07:25:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/174350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wishtheworst/pseuds/wishtheworst
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>These were written for the <a href="http://community.livejournal.com/1sentence/">1sentence</a> community on LJ, which is a challenge in which you choose a table of 50 words and write one sentence on a pairing for each of them. It was a lot of fun and really hard and I would love to write a dozen more of these.</p><p>Most of this is written from Nathan's perspective except one from Audrey's. The sentences are also wildly out of chronological order, but they range from the 80s until the present.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where You End and I Begin

#01 – Air  
The bright side to the lack of oxygen between them is that nothing can catch fire.

#02 – Apples  
He tastes like fall in Nathan’s mouth, sharp like cold air and tart-sweet like the apple still in his hand, but he feels like nothing.

#03 – Beginning  
Duke is eight years old and already an asshole; Nathan is eight years old and already knows he will never know any better.

#04 – Bugs  
Sometimes Nathan swears it’s still there somewhere under his skin scratching and biting to get out under disappointed hands, but he can only remember that this felt like something once, not what that something was.

#05 – Coffee  
Jess leaves before the taste of her cinnamon sugar caffeine syrup is off his tongue and that’s the only reason he lets Duke push a cardboard cup of black coffee into his hands without saying a word or wanting any in return.

#06 – Dark  
In the dark Nathan can’t separate them; his hands are everywhere looking for the edges but if there is anything marking where they become distinct he can’t find it.

#07 – Despair  
This is how it ends: they never get away, from each other or anything else.

#08 – Doors  
Duke likes to tell people the only time he’s at school after three is for detention, but that’s not the only lie he could get caught in pressed weak-legged between Nathan and the door of the art room’s storage closet.

#09 – Drink  
Audrey seems pleased when the three of them can act like friends, sitting around the Gull after hours drinking together and he’s happy that she’s happy, but Nathan is always relieved when he’s alone enough afterward to break character.

#10 – Duty  
Everyone here owns a piece of him and Nathan takes a strange pleasure in denying Duke the shreds and fragments he thinks should be his.

#11 – Earth  
Time stretches out in equal length to the distance between them, but knowing they’re connected by the ground beneath their feet is like touching somehow – whether that makes it better or worse is debatable.

#12 – End  
Duke is almost thirty and still an asshole; Nathan is almost thirty and if he doesn’t know any better at least he knows he should.

#13 – Fall  
They are a tangle of limbs and things they can’t talk about, sinking into morning damp sand and each other, old enough to know what they’re doing and too young to care that this one is for keeps.

#14 – Fire  
It’s just a bruise, purple red and sore to the touch, but the heat of his skin makes him wonder for an irrational moment if Duke’s mouth can actually burn or if it just feels that way.

#15 – Flexible  
It’s not supposed to have any strings, no questions, no promises – it’s supposed to work like that, somehow.

#16 – Flying  
When the geese start flying south he wishes, not for the first time, that Duke’s migratory patterns were this predictable; winter here is miserable alone.

#17 – Food  
Nathan swallows what might be the worst mouthful of pancakes he’s ever eaten, grins encouragingly and hopes that syrup can work miracles.

#18 – Foot  
They always stand too close to each other, Audrey decides, unsure if she should send them to separate corners or tell them to leave twelve inches between them for the Holy Spirit like the nuns did at junior high dances with the boys from St. Mark’s.

#19 – Grave  
Nathan wants to say something kinder than “hate’s a strong word,” but with the end in sight he won’t let a lie be the last thing between them.

#20 – Green  
Neither of them has ever been in love with anybody else yet so neither of them knows they are with each other and neither of them is any damn good at it.

#21 – Head  
Duke’s fingers twist tighter in his hair and the pleading way he sighs Nathan’s name says all the things neither of them would voice out loud otherwise.

#22 – Hollow  
In the beginning the warmth of Duke’s skin is what Nathan misses the most, but as time goes on the void left by everything that heat meant is both heavy and empty, pushing out everything else to fill him with the burden of nothing.

#23 – Honor  
Not asking about what happens when they’re apart is part of it (no questions, no promises), but Nathan can’t help it; he almost misses the words mouthed against his collar bone, “not like this, not like you,” but their eyes meet, both of them unnerved by it, and they both know that’s the end of pretending it doesn’t matter.

#24 – Hope  
The boat is a piece of shit and there’s a good chance it will sink eventually and Duke will drown, solving all of Nathan’s problems.

#25 – Light  
Duke wakes up confused and annoyed, blinking into the sunlight filtering through the blinds like it’s a personal insult he can’t understand before burying his face in Nathan’s shoulder, just like he does every time Nathan has the audacity to move or breathe unnecessarily loudly before ten a.m.

#26 – Lost  
Nathan wonders if one day he’s going to look at him and there won’t be anger or regret, that sooner or later there won’t be anything left at all; he can’t tell if losing Duke all the way, for good, is something he’s worried about or just wishful thinking.

#27 – Metal  
It takes Duke twenty-five years to apologize for sixteen tacks and Nathan knows they will both be dead before he manages anything more substantial.

#28 – New  
Watching Duke chase Audrey is funny until Nathan realizes the last time he saw that half uncertain smile it was aimed at him.

#29 – Old  
Fifty thousand dollars worth of counterfeit money sitting between them is the only reminder that these are just old patterns, abandoned habits; they aren’t friends and he can’t feel Duke’s knee brushing his own under the table.

#30 – Peace  
They both believe they’re trying to get along for Audrey, but Nathan wonders if she isn’t pushing them together for their own sake; sometimes he realizes she’s watching them in the careful way she studies everything and he feels like he’s under the world’s sharpest, best-intentioned microscope.

#31 – Poison  
Nathan pushes him away because he wants to, because he’s angry enough that the frustration and hurt that flashes across Duke’s face is better than anything he could do with his hands, but only seconds pass before he pulls him back, drawing him close and kissing apologies into his mouth; Nathan just wants to give some of it back, make Duke taste a little of the poison he has to swallow whenever he needs him like this just a little more than he needs to hate him.

#32 – Pretty  
Duke was a goofy looking skinny kid who shot up too fast, all long limbs and giant hands with a face he wouldn’t grow into for years, but even before his body caught up with his height and he stopped getting in his own way he made Nathan swallow hard and lose his train of thought.

#33 – Rain  
It pours for three days straight but the lightening and wind that keeps everyone in Haven tucked away inside ensures that no one sees them soaked to the skin with icy water while Nathan drinks rain from Duke’s mouth.

#34 – Regret  
It’s been a long time, but every so often Nathan tucks something away in the back of his head to tell Duke later before he remembers there won’t be any more later; sometimes he says it out loud into silence to no one in particular because it’s better feeling like he’s losing it than admitting he might miss him.

#35 – Roses  
July heat bakes the overgrown forgotten garden in the backyard and the scent of salt breeze and wilted flowers is thick, suffocating; Nathan’s eyes connect with his father’s through the kitchen window at the same moment Duke’s lips skim the sweat-damp nape of his neck, but all he can do is stare back in challenge, pinned immobile between them.

#36 – Secret  
Neither of them cares who knows anymore, but Nathan likes to keep them like a secret tucked in his pocket, something perfect and inexplicable to hold in selfish hands, the only thing that is only theirs.

#37 – Snakes  
The next time he sees Duke his right shoulder is covered in black ink that twists and curls around his arm, fading in and out of tan skin, and all Nathan can think about is tracing the paths of those serpentine lines, tasting them , but he bites his lip hard instead.

#38 – Snow  
Snow clings to Duke’s eyelashes, delicate melting white on dark, and Nathan hates himself for noticing and because he looks away several seconds too late.

#39 – Solid  
Everything crumbles to dust around him – Haven, his father, the tentative truce they were cobbling together out of the benefit of the doubt neither of them is really capable of anymore.

#40 – Spring  
The first signs of green hit like a fever after months of gray and ice, and just when it’s almost worth staying Duke is dying to leave again, pushing-threatening-conning-bribing-not-quite-pleading-but-always-asking-without-asking Nathan to come too, to believe it would be different anywhere else.

#41 – Stable  
Nathan tests the ice, rolling his eyes at Duke’s reluctance and holding out his hand because Duke is a skeptic and a bit of a coward about everything except him; they’re eleven years old and it’s December of 1988 then, but for the most part those things never change.

#42 – Strange  
He knows he isn’t real, hasn’t felt like anything more than a handful of loosely connected and poorly contained ideas for a while now, but that doesn’t make it any less disconcerting to hear Duke say it, because for the longest time Nathan thought he had been keeping it secret.

#43 – Summer  
It’s too hot to sleep but sneaking out is easy and the ocean is always cold; Nathan licks salt from the hollow of Duke’s throat and the hard curve of his hipbones, and the shivers that course through the skin under his tongue have nothing to do with the water.

#44 – Taboo  
Nathan doesn’t approve of the things Duke does and he doesn’t miss an opportunity to remind him of that, but he can’t help laughing out loud the morning he gets in the truck to go to work and finds the skull and crossbones sticker stuck on the glove box.

#45 – Ugly  
There are things you can’t apologize for, take back or undo: Duke deals those things out like he can’t stop, Nathan has the time on his hands to turn them over in his memory until they are even uglier and after a while neither of them can quite look the other in the eye.

#46 – War  
Sometimes there’s one wrong word, some unnecessary contact or one of them looks just a little too long and they forget all the reasons they don’t do this anymore, but it all goes wrong too soon; underneath everything else inside it tears and claws like war.

#47 – Water  
The first time Nathan can’t do it and walks away; the second time they’re standing on the deck behind the restaurant waiting for Audrey when he manages “I wanted to see if you were ok”; they spend a few more moments staring out at the water in silence before Duke begins to say “I should have –,” but then Audrey calls their names and it’s over before it began.

#48 – Welcome  
Duke always has an explanation for where he’s been this time and he won’t ever believe Nathan doesn’t need to hear it until they’re twisted up in the mess they make of each other.

#49 – Winter  
Roads are snowed shut all over and ice took out the town’s power sometime overnight; they can see their breath inside but it’s warm in bed and there’s no reason to leave.

#50 – Wood  
It’s a particularly ugly splinter, a thread dark line under the skin on the pad of his thumb commemorating his destructive rampage, but once Duke is convinced he’s not dangerous anymore he makes him sit still while he picks it out as carefully as if Nathan could still feel it; this is the first time Nathan has let Duke touch him in almost a year and for a second the hand balancing his own is visibly unsteady.


End file.
